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Paper short abstract:

Using a gendered analysis, this paper examines the post election violence (PEV) in Kibera, Kenya, between December 2007 and February 2008. Through in depth interviews with Kibera residents, the article interrogates how gender influenced violent mobilizations in Kenya’s most notorious slum.

Paper long abstract:

Using a gendered analysis, this paper examines the post election violence (PEV) in Kibera, Kenya, between December 2007 and February 2008. Through in depth interviews with Kibera residents, the article interrogates how gender influenced violent mobilizations in Kenya's most notorious slum. Most scholarly analyses have tended to understand the post-election violence as a result of politicized ethnic identities, class, and local socio-economic dynamics. Implicitly or explicitly, these frameworks assume that women are victims of violence while men are its perpetrators, and ignore the ways in which gender, which cuts across these categories, produces and shapes conflict. Kibera's conflict is often ascribed to the mobilization of disaffected male youths by political "Big Men." But the research findings show how men, who would ordinarily not go to war, are obliged to fight to "save face" in their communities and how women become

integral to the production of violent exclusionary mobilizations. Significantly, notions of masculinity and femininity modified the character of Kibera's conflict. Acts of gender-based violence, gang rapes, and forced circumcisions became intensely entwined with ethno-political performances to annihilate opposing groups. The battle for political power was also a battle of masculinities.